About 120,000 Russian children have no family – deputy PM

44,000 of these children are those whose parents are alive, but are stripped of parental rights

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MOSCOW, March 22 (Itar-Tass) – A total of 118,000 Russian children have no family and need parents, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said at the Government Hour session of the State Duma lower house of parliament.

“These are the children that are on the all-Russia data bank,” Golodets said. “This is a very big figure for our country,” the deputy prime minister stressed. “Unfortunately, the number of children who became orphans in 2012 (74,400 children) increased as compared with 2011, she stated.

“This is appalling statistics especially when we understand that 44,000 of these children are those whose parents are alive, but are stripped of parental rights,” she said. According to her, “our problems of orphanhood are not separate problems, this is an absolutely clear derivate from that social ailment that we face,” she added.

Within a year’s time slightly more than 61,000 children were adopted or taken into guardianship, she said. “This figure does not inspire optimism as it is very small,” Golodets said. She also said that the number of adopted children grows at a slow pace. It has increased to 6,500, she said, adding that she implied only adoptions within Russia.

A total of 16,500 Russian families are on the adoption waiting list. “We would want to see the number of such families grow,” she noted. At the same time, adoptions by foreign parents are gradually declining. “Last year only 2,600 adoptions from a foreign country were registered,” the deputy prime minister added.